The compositions of Benedetto Marcello, a member of a noble Venetian family, are frequently referred to as Patrizio Veneto.
Although he is a music student of Antonio Lotti and Francesco Gasparini, his father wants Benedetto to devote himself to law.
Benedetto manages to combine a life in law and public service with one in music.
He had in 1711 been appointed a member of the Council of Forty (in Venice's central government).
Il teatro alla moda (The Fashionable Theater) is a satirical pamphlet in which Marcello vents his critical opinions on the milieu of the Italian opera seria in the first decades of the eighteenth century.
It is first published by the end of 1720 anonymously in Venice.
Marcello criticizes virtually every aspect of opera seria and its social environment: the artificiality of plots, the stereotyped format of music, the extravagant scenography and machinery, the inability and venality of composers and poets, the vanity and vulgarity of singers, the avidity of impresarios, the ineptitude of musicians.
The full title reads "THE FASHIONABLE THEATER – OR – safe and easy METHOD for correctly composing and performing Italian OPERAS in the modern style, – In which – useful and necessary Advice is given to Librettists, Composers, Musicians of both sexes, Impresarios, Performers, Engineers, and Scene Painters, comic Characters, Tailors, Pages, Dancers, Prompters, Copyists, Protectors, and MOTHERS of female Virtuoso singers, & other People belonging to Theater."
Il teatro alla moda is in fact written as a series of chapters where advice is ironically given to the various people involved in operatic productions, in order to meet "the modern customs" and bizarre requirements of such theatrical events.
This little work, which will be frequently reprinted, is not only extremely amusing, but is most valuable as a contribution to the history of opera.
